Tech

Boxee With Live TV Is a Cord Cutter's Dream [REVIEW]

Hands On with Boxee Live

Apps

Boxee 1.5 has cleaned up the app display screen. It's easy to browse featured apps, your favorite apps and various app repositories.

Files

The file and source view in Boxee 1.5 are now a bit cleaner.

Friends

You can see what videos or clips your friends are watching and then watch that same clip via various services.

Home

The home screen in Boxee 1.5 now has a new "Live TV" option when the Live TV dongle is plugged in.

Live TV - Edit Channels 1

The Live TV mode allows users to edit the channel lineup.

Live TV - Edit Channels 2

In the Live TV view, you can edit channels, toggling which stations appear and what how they are named.

Live TV - Share

Users can share the program and station they are watching on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

Live TV - channel info - current

The channel guide shows descriptions of currently playing content.

Live TV - channel info - future

You can also skip ahead and preview upcoming programming, complete with description.

Live TV - osd - 1 - user initiated

While watching TV, you can bring up the on-screen display to quickly pull up more information.

Live TV - osd - 3 - channel guide

This is the on-screen guide overlay, it makes it easy to browse what is happening without taking over the screen.

Main Menu

The new main menu provides easy access to other functions and services.

Media Action

Meta data from a piece of media will show the various watch and share options available for that content.

Movies - Movie Library (All)

The movie library is can now be filtered based on content.

Shows - Show Library (All)

The TV show library can also be filtered and separated into TV seasons.

Watch Later

The Watch Later queue can be filtered by source.

Web - Favorites

Pulling up favorite sites is now much more like the Chrome browser.

Web

The interface of the onscreen web browser is more refined.

Boxee is bringing live TV to the Boxee Box with its new live TV add-on and version 1.5 of the Boxee software. The company hopes that the combination of the $49.99 Boxee Live TV dongle and a Boxee Box will appeal to users looking to cut the cable cord.

We've had a chance to use the Boxee Live TV tuner alongside the 1.5 software update. Does the combination of over-the-top and over-the-air (OTA) content help users make the jump?

Can OTA and Online Content Replace Cable?

In its marketing and press information, Boxee is really going after cord cutters — those that are giving up cable television and instead getting all of their content from over-the-top online services and subscriptions.

Making the transition is easier said than done, according to previous cord cutting studies. Sure, tons of content is available online or through subscription services, but access to live television content streams is almost always restricted to cable television subscribers.

This is fine for certain types of television shows, but the real-time element of social TV has made watching live TV much more attractive.

The biggest roadblock for many potential users is that these services make using the TV more complex. It's fantastic to turn on Roku, Apple TV, Boxee Box or Blu-ray player and start browsing for movies and TV shows via Netflix, Vudu, Amazon, iTunes or Hulu Plus, but none of them are, like live TV, already streaming content when you first turn them. Flipping on a channel and vegging out in front of the couch is simply more of a chore with these services.

This is the barrier Boxee wants to break down. By offering access to live OTA content through the same interface and using the same remote as the connected device, Boxee is promising the best of both worlds.

Setting Up

The Boxee Live TV tuner is a USB dongle that plugs into the back of the Boxee Box. On the opposite end of the USB cable is a coaxial port. This can be attached to a coaxial input or to an included antenna.

Our set came with a digital cable and a coaxial signal that allows a TV without a cable box to view the digital OTA signals. For testing purposes, we also used Boxee's included antenna. Depending on your area, you may need an amplified HDTV antenna for maximum channel access.

Setup is easy. Simply plug in the Live TV adaptor into the back of the Boxee Box. Then, follow the on-screen instructions for setup.

After selecting the type of connection you're using, the system scans the antenna or coaxial airwaves for channels that it can find and display. We found that selecting "cable" as an input option yielded no results, however using "antenna" even when using the coaxial running through the walls, worked perfectly.

After finding your channels, selecting the new "Live TV" icon from the top of the Boxee menu brings up live television.

Rarely has the process of setting up OTA-to-computer or HTPC systems been as simple or problem-free as it is with the Boxee Box. Boxee has taken a page out of TiVo's playbook when it comes to ease of setup. That's a good thing.

Watching Live TV

Watching channels via Boxee is similar to watching them directly through an antenna or using an adapter from Elgato or other TV-to-PC devices.

There is an on-screen guide showcasing what's currently on, as well as upcoming programming. In a nice social twist, Boxee also shows you how many people are watching a certain channel, as well what your friends are watching.

You can also share what you're watching to Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. Boxee also has a new Live TV Timeline app for Facebook that uses the new social gestures to easily share what you're watching. (This can also be turned off for users that don't want to share their viewing habits.)

When you're finished watching live TV, you can exit the app and return to watching content from the Internet or a local home network.

The best part of Boxee Live TV is the ability to switch between live TV and Netflix or networked content. This is a stumbling block with other devices, such as the Logitech Harmony.

The only downside is that all the live channels have to come in over-the-air or through coax. There are a lot more channels available this way than one might expect, but it still means that most of your favorite channels could be off limits.

Boxee will hopefully make agreements with major cable companies to provide special cable boxes — boxes that are essentially a Boxee Box and a regular digital cable solution. That would be the holy grail.

For users who primarily watch live content on the major networks, however, the experience is top notch.

Boxee 1.5

To use Boxee Live TV, you need to upgrade to Boxee 1.5. This release has been in testing and in beta for the past month or so and it's an evolution to the excellent Boxee update the company released last spring.

In addition to supporting live TV, Boxee 1.5 also has an updated interface that makes browsing different types of content more seamless.

The Future of Boxee and Connected Platforms

Over the course of nearly three and a half years, Boxee's software — and later the Boxee Box — have evolved from a software layer into something that is much more like an appliance

Boxee 1.5 was released for Mac and PC last month and it is the last stand-alone version of the software that Boxee will release. While this is sad news for HTPC and build-it-yourself fans, it represents the realities of the current connected device market.

The connected living room and connected ecosystems have been a constant promise on the tech horizon but that potential has yet to be fully realized. We should have been further along by now.

The biggest hurdle that connected device makers face — besides getting access to content — is managing to pull together an experience that isn't too much work for the user.

For too long, the convergence of the computer and the television has meant that the resulting device acts too much like a computer. A decade ago, TiVo was on the right track and very few companies have managed to adequately raise the bar.

Even Apple has struggled to find a way to make the content experience seamless on the bigger screen.

Boxee comes closer to any other solution we've seen. The all-in-one nature of the device is a huge boon and the growing support for subscription services is top notch.

We're not ready to cut the cord just yet but Boxee with Live TV is our favorite connected device experience for those looking to make the leap.

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